Thoughts on Shrapnel by Payne

The BIP is not a static concept, and this is covered in all the literature and discussions that have been held about it. We carry our BIP with us from birth to death. While the BIP may evolve over time, it is never escaped, as such, so any visualisation of our lives as being journeys down "paths" should include the BIP metaphor (tried and tested as it is, it will make further investigation easier to breakdown and comprehend)

Paths are a broad, fairly general, description of the journey, and in a previous post, i postulated that a certain degree of detail Vs. "The Big Picture" would anyway be inherent in any further investigation. For the purposes of trying to actually find something usable, I've gone for a balance of detail with big picture.

Paths are fairly easy to understand, I think, and should simplify the process.

"Shrapnel" however, is a trcky concept, and hard to pin down. Is it communication? is it good or bad, or both?

The best I can really say, with the amount I've been thinking about it is that, along with good old random chance, it is what governs "Paths", specifically deviations from a straightforward, constant path.

What it is is really dependant on which way you are looking at a path, from which perspective. As I said earlier, I'm going to try and approach this as a balance betwen detail and an over view, so it is probably best to examine the "shrapnel" idea from a basis of any intra/extra-BIP interaction, so therefore communication and relationships with anything from outside your own BIP. That would be any interaction originating from outside to inside or vice-versa. These interactions will influence choices and "directions" on the path.

A quick note about random chance, which could influence you in the same way, this is often really dependant on your reaction to it as much as it is by the event itself, so is really covered in the BIP stuff already.

External stimuli can light the path before us, blind us to it, or cast a new light on the bars of our prison, causing us to re-evaluate them. They provide the framewok you can visualise the path in.

The whole "shrapnel" idea seems to have boiled down to the art of comunication and interpretation through the bars in our prisons, learning how to do both as effectively as possible, and learning the limitations of what we can do with both. It's perhaps the ultimate expression of the idea "think for yourself", it lessens the need to communicate through multiple sets of bars and filters and/or makes the task of having to do so more defined.

Observable, concrete Reality, concepts are easier to communicate through bars and filters, as it's individually testable, and we know that certain things will always hold true for all of us. We are not going to suddenly over come gravity, or learn telepathy, and we can be relatively certain that with these solid concepts, very little loss of information will occur through interpretation.

Emotive and perceptual concepts are much harder to communicate effectively, as they will be affected much more by an individuals bars, i think because most bars are emotive and perceptual by nature. Interpretation of any given interaction based on these concepts will be skewed by multiple sets of bars.

With that, we can surmise we have REALITY, and juxtaposed over that, a more more personal emotive and perceptual reality. Some of the problems we have with this, and some other ideas, is that building more realities (metaphors, concepts, interpretation) over the second type of reality get you more and more removed from REALITY, making these metaphors/concepts/interpretations less testable, less communicatable and, ultimately, far less useful.

With this view of the "shrapnel" concept, we can see it is ultimately down to interpretation whether it is good or bad. Some people like to build bars to deflect some of the interactions, or to encouage others - due to interpretation. Some people will expend a lot of energy trying to tailor their communication AROUND other peoples bars, or go for an all out assault on them- due to interpreation.

Ultimately I guess all I could really say about this all is thatt hat great constant, time, will force you down your path, whether you deide to take a hand in where it leads you or not. So you can sit in your cell, isolated and enjoying the ride, or you can constantly consider your interactions, and ignore the scenery, or, finally, ind a balance betwen the two and try to make the best of both worlds.

Where has this led us ultimately? I think nowhere, But maybe someone out there will interpret something from this interaction and find something useful. I hope so.